Etching/dissolving Foamed PVC (Sintra, Palight, Palfoam)

Hi all.

Does anyone know of a way to etch or dissolve Foamed PVC? For the more intricate work, I'd like to print/make a mask, stick it to the Foamed PVC and then etch away the non-masked areas.

Cheers.

Hi Womble,
I got some knauf insulation xps board (ClimaFoam, yellow) from Bunning recently for a base board for a project I'm working on. As it is expanded polystyrene I tried some Tamiya thin cement on a corner of it to see if it would dissolve in a mess or not. It didn't. The area the brush touched dissolved slightly, but that was it. You could try that with a paper mask. Though I'm not sure how detailed you could get, as there may be some dissolution under the edges of the paper masks. The glue you use to place the masks may have some effect in controlling the extra dissolution though.
The stuff is pretty cheap for quite a large board. I think I paid about $20 for a 1200mm x 600mm sheet.
Might be worth a try.
Cheers,

Anything that eats the foam pvc will eat the mask...chemicals like meth chloride can eat it, but will eat the mask. Acid maybe, you'd have to test and anything you try is super toxic and dangerous....be careful good luck

Thanks for the help guys.
Rats, yes, I've been using exactly that XPS board (from Bunnings no less.) I find that it's great for general body construction. But it doesn't hold detail well, the edges are fragile and boy, is it tough to dimension! (I need a foam thicknesser/planer!)

So I've been replacing detail parts and some edges with styrene, and lately, Foamed PVC. (Palight in my case.) It's sooooooo nice to work with. Holds detail very well, cuts much more easily than styrene.

In this shot, the main body is XPS. I'd formed the details originally by cutting in to the XPS (aaaargh, hard, unreliable) or layering XPS with polyurethane glue (slooooooow). But it was very hard to keep the detail. So I cut out the details from the foam, and replaced them with PVC inserts (the white areas). Gaps were filled with pre-mixed wood filler.


yaris, thanks. I thought that might be the case. Oh well, I guess it's back to sanding, filing and cutting. Cheers.

I use a lot of PVC (sintra). I mostly use plotter cut vinyl decals for my details. It's even better if you use the part as a master for a mold. Then you don't have to worry about the adhesive on the vinyl giving up and peeling off.


All of the panel details on these examples were done this way.


Kelly Krider

Kelly, that set looks great. I hadn't thought about vinyl cutting. (It seems to be very spendy though, for a good cutter?)

I haven't done any moulding yet. Every time I look at moulding on YouTube, someone is using some $200 tub of Smooth-on, and I think "yeah, nah".

Thanks for the help.